Pope Francis: Cardinals elect first-ever Jesuit pope

When Pope Francis strode onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday afternoon, it was clear that the papal conclave had picked an outsider: A chemist with no Vatican experience, a man who lived in a poor district of Buenos Aires and the first pope from the Americas.

But perhaps most importantly, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio — a man who almost no one pegged as a future pope ­— is a Jesuit.

Widely seen as the man to “clean house” at the scandal-plagued Vatican, Pope Francis hails from an order known primarily for living simply, running the Church’s schools and missions and explicitly swearing not to pursue any high office within the Church.

“He’s always someone who’s been very close to the poor, and that might be different from some of the other cardinals,” said Father Michael Rosinski, a Jesuit priest originally from Fenwick, Ont. now living in Rome.

In contrast to the men who elected him, many of whom left palatial estates to convene in Rome, Pope Francis lived in a modest apartment.

Reportedly, when he became an archbishop in Argentina he refused to have new bishop’s vestments tailored, opting to cut costs by wearing the hand-me-downs of his predecessor.

On Wednesday, he broke with tradition, again, by asking the assembled Vatican crowds to pray for him.

“A Jesuit with his kind of background and training will not have a defensive stance,” said Father Gordon Rixon, an associate professor at Regis College, the Jesuit school of theology at the University of Toronto.

Known officially as members of the Society of Jesus, an order established in the 16th century with a mission to serve the pope directly, Jesuits are sometimes known as the pontiff’s “cavalry” or “God’s Marines.” As noted agents of the counter-reformation, they were also among the first to bring Christianity to large parts of Asia and the Americas.

Rigorously trained, the society’s 20,000 members now preside over an expansive network of schools and universities.

“If the church is like a navy, the diocesan priests [committed to a certain geographic area] are in command of the fleet,” said Father Terence Fay, a Canadian Jesuit priest.

“The Jesuits … are what the navy would call auxiliaries; they do the housekeeping, the cooking, the security, they do all the specialized services the diocesan priests don’t want to do.”

With the election of Pope Francis, the first-ever Jesuit pope, “you have the auxiliaries taking over the church, as it were,“ said Father Fay.

Although three quarters of Jesuits are priests, they are rarely appointed as bishops or cardinals. Of the cardinals at conclave, the newly named Pope Francis was the only Jesuit.

The order elects its own leader, known as the Black Pope because of the black vestments worn by the Jesuits, at a conclave in Rome, where members from around the world gather to make their choice.

In Canada, Jesuit missionaries were often among the first Europeans to make contact with inland aboriginal peoples and Jesuit ethnographic accounts provide many of Canada’s first written historical records. Indeed, Kateri Tekakwitha, Canada’s only aboriginal saint, was baptized by Jesuit missionaries in the late 17th century.

While most Jesuits avoid clashes with the Vatican hierarchy, previous popes, including John Paul II, have taken issue with the autonomy the order appears to enjoy. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV issued a papal brief dissolving the order across much of Europe, forcing the society’s members to seek sanctuary in Russia and parts of eastern Europe until the brief was rescinded in 1814.

More recently, in 2007 the doctrinal office of the Vatican criticized the “erroneous and even dangerous writings” of a Spanish Jesuit scholar named Jon Sobrino, an advocate of Marxist-inspired theology.

The order has also inspired a number of conspiracy theories, many of them helping to fuel anti-Jesuit sentiment. In Britain, Jesuits were associated with the gunpowder plot to kill King James I, as well as schemes to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I. In Germany, anti-Jesuit sentiment compelled chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1872 to expel all Jesuits from the German empire.